Chester Sam­bra­no

The sta­tis­tics of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence killings are ris­ing al­though the po­lice ser­vice and oth­er stake­hold­ers are try­ing to fos­ter change.

But the thrust to cre­ate a cul­tur­al change is on­ly prov­ing to be an up­hill bat­tle, par­tic­u­lar­ly if some in the so­ci­ety seem un­will­ing to con­form.

The po­lice have been push­ing a “See some­thing, say some­thing,” ap­proach but a line in a pop­u­lar 2020 so­ca song called “I ain’t see” by Trinidad Ghost, re­al name Akel Mclean, is be­ing in­ter­pret­ed as pro­mot­ing the op­po­site while gath­er­ing sig­nif­i­cant air­play on ra­dio sta­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly the ur­ban fre­quen­cies.

Most of the song deals with is­sues such as in­fi­deli­ty and oth­er fa­mil­iar lo­cal is­sues, but, in one line of the song the artiste sings “Meh (sic) neigh­bour beat­ing he wife, I ain’t see,” and this is a point of con­tention for Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith and oth­ers.

Pres­i­dent of the In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Re­source Net­work (IWRN) San­drine Rat­tan said the line in song triv­i­alis­es do­mes­tic vi­o­lence and has no place in a song. She said ra­dio sta­tions must con­sid­er vic­tims of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence

“In light of our cur­rent cir­cum­stances the unedit­ed ver­sion does not have a place par­tic­u­lar­ly as fam­i­lies who have lost their loved ones through DV (do­mes­tic vi­o­lence) are hurt­ing bad­ly. We have to deal with that every day? She asked.

Rat­tan said if peo­ple are se­ri­ous about sav­ing lives and look­ing for each oth­er, “we must re­port such in­ci­dents as soon as they meet our eyes. elim­i­nat­ing do­mes­tic vi­o­lence from our so­ci­ety is every­body’s busi­ness.”

Sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments were ex­pressed by Gary Grif­fith who said “See some­thing, say some­thing.”

He added: “We have tak­en this neg­a­tive con­no­ta­tion “meh neigh­bour beat­ing he wife, I eh see it” nor­mal­ized it, and now we don’t hear any­thing wrong when we choose to con­sume these songs. For many years, gen­der-based vi­o­lence was of­ten hid­den and it was rarely dis­cussed, we are no longer do­ing that. It is now com­ing out of the shad­ows and it will be dis­cussed open­ly as we try to elim­i­nate it from our so­ci­ety. By ac­knowl­edg­ing this is­sue, we can start to teach our­selves that this is not nor­mal or okay. This is where change can be­gin.

Grif­fith al­so said: “A neigh­bour who sees some­thing but says noth­ing serves no pur­pose. It does not help. That in­for­ma­tion be­ing for­ward­ed can save a life.”

Last week, the Po­lice Ser­vice launched the Gen­der-Based Vi­o­lence Unit (GB­VU) to tack­le do­mes­tic and gen­der-based vi­o­lence.

Psy­chi­a­trist and In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dr Var­ma Deyals­ingh al­so weighed in on the song say­ing peo­ple should be­come ghost re­porter by re­port­ing cas­es of Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence

He told Guardian Me­dia, “We love to gos­sip about what we see ,but to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to try and in­ter­fere is nat­ur­al as there is the risk in­volved where the abuser turns on you or too much con­fu­sion in­volved where you are pulled in­to the sce­nario.

If we see we need to re­port. The new Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence Gen­der Unit needs to set up anony­mous re­port­ing like crime stop­pers to get peo­ple who ob­serve to call.

“Like Trinidad Ghost we ain’t see may be a safe op­tion but we could re­port it like a ghost, be a ghost re­porter we could save a life, he said,.

He added, “Let us see the unit gets a re­port that some­one has ver­bal­ly, emo­tion­al­ly and phys­i­cal­ly abus­ing his wife. We have to have a lev­el of in­ter­ven­tion with a so­cial work­er or com­mu­ni­ty po­lice or even some­one from the do­mes­tic vi­o­lence unit can go in and speak to the abused. The abuser can es­ca­late his be­hav­iour think­ing that it was the abused who called. So we may have to reach her oth­er when he’s at work or when she leaves the house for any rea­son or via some fam­i­ly in­ter­ven­tion.”

In 1970 a song called “Se­vere lick­ing,” which could be con­sid­ered dou­ble en­ten­dre, was re­leased by The Baron. The song de­scribed in some de­tail a phys­i­cal in­ter­ac­tion be­tween a cou­ple while on Char­lotte Street in Port of Spain.

“I wasn’t there it was Bomber and Cypher who say they see Shorty beat­ing a girl the oth­er day. This big Ca­lyp­son­ian, I was made to un­der­stand put a se­vere lick­ing on the woman.” It said.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Trinidad Ghost ask­ing if he felt the line in his song could be in­ter­pret­ed as triv­i­al­iz­ing do­mes­tic vi­o­lence. he asid he is not pro­mot­ing do­mes­tic vi­o­lence.

He said, “It’s re­al­i­ty some ppl (sic) wud c (sic) their neigh­bors fight­ing and they won’t get in­volved. Some may call d (sic) po­lice some may ig­nore. Most ppl tend to mind dey (sic) busi­ness nowa­days. No one wants to b (sic) a wit­ness or b in dra­ma that’s the Trinidad we live in. I am not pro­mot­ing do­mes­tic vi­o­lence in any way, I am not en­cour­ag­ing oth­ers to not help some­one who is be­ing abused.”